Fluster
by Riiru
Summary: After the 74th Hunger Games, Peeta still doesn't want to accept, that Katniss has fooled him and the whole Capitol with her love. After the cameras are gone, he chases after her, to speak to her, again.


Hello together and welcome on my first translated story. I normally write them in German, but I love the English language, so I now want to translate my stories, to reach more people. I'm always open for reviews, so please feel free to help me become better with all this stuff.

Riiru

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Their heart knocks in the breast when it turns round. There Peeta stands already behind her, with few steps he has found them. Instinctively.

Fury resonates in his voice when he speaks. „Katniss if now you go you're on yourself alone."

She closes her eyes, swallows hard and clenches the hands to fists to fight against the contradictory feelings in herself. She does not understand, why she suddenly is like paralyzed, why her legs carry her no further. Because of the ultimatum?

Up to now she has also not concerned what he has said, up to this moment after the interview when he has proven his love for her in front of the whole Capitol. The first time that generally somebody has shown interest in her. Understandably that she wasn't able at the time differently, than to react to his provocation and to push him.

She tries to pull herself up and to stand firm his look which meets them icily. Peeta is disappointed by her, quite obviously he doesn't understand her sudden idiom. Probably he has thought that her feelings have been real in the arena and cannot resign itself to the fact that she simply wants to forget the whole story.

„You've said, you have pursued a strategy with Haymitch, that's all, really?", he presses between clenched teeth out. Blue eyes hit on grey. He is so injured that her chest contracts, but she tries to look uninterested because she doesn't want to give him hope.

If she not even knows by herself what she wants, how should she make to him then comprehensibly? What it concerns to find the right words, she had never been the right person. That hasn't changed, although she has changed a lot.

For a while she were another person, not herself and has pointed to the Capitol and the spectators what they expected from her. The charming, loyal Katniss in love. But basically she not even knows what this means. Now, that the games have come to an end, she cares no longer what the others think. Above all now, after the hunger games.

Actually, everything is different, but she is still trying to see, that she can be the old Katniss again. She doesn't want to admit that the arena has changed her. She is strong, courageous and a winner. But she is also a liar.

She can see it in Peeta's blue eyes. He fell in love with her, more than he knew he would. She knows it, because she is clever and can add one and one. But Peeta is also disappointed. The fact that she has lied and was not loyal to herself. The fact that she takes now a step away from him.

Of course, she has felt fine with him, but, after all, she would have taken every alliance with kiss hand. Peeta was simply the person whom she has trusted in the end mostly what was also not difficult with his open kind.

Slowly she steps away further away from Peeta, because she knows she won't be able to break the silence. She refuses to give him an answer, because that wouldn't it to the old Katniss.

Her eyes go over his face which is tightened strangely and makes a short hold with his curled forehead in which a few blond strands fall. His eyes look urgently, the lips are pulled weakly. He looks reproachfully. His hands hang at the side on his body down because he feels obviously uneasy and doesn't know what to do with them. Even if his words sound strong and he speaks with a confidence which Katniss does not know, where from he has them, he works all together in such a way as if he attacked any minute of it.

„Don't punish me with silence, please. You know what we've got through together and I think that we can also rest in future together." He seems to consider one moment. „I am not able to do this without you", he quietly adds.

His honesty is amazing and works on Katniss like an electric shock. Her eyes are wide-open and she lowers the look at her hands which she has folded before her body middle uncertainly. She's not used to feel herself so vulnerable.

„Nevertheless, you do not know at all how it will be without me", is the only what she says for the moment. A feeling like warm cocoa from the inside warms up her up. And it makes addicted, like the drink that she has discovered on the journey to the Capitol. Unusually, but she loves it from the outset.

To be dependent from a little bit or to somebody, she doesn't like it because she is afraid to be dropped. Why she comes now on the thought? She has compared the cocoa unconsciously to Peeta, or the feeling which he releases in her. If he is in her nearness, she feels sure. Mostly, in any case.

However, it has already seemed that he pull away the ground under her feet. Like at that time, in the arena when she has kissed him in the cave and for herself, not for the cameras. Even when he wasn't able to stir or to protect her, she has certainly felt as never before.

Nevertheless, she knew which danger rescues to stay too long at the same place and she knew also that the Gamemakers intervened with pleasure in the events. Still it made no difference to her because she could be with Peeta.

But exactly there was problem. In the arena he has given her hold, something to which she could stick. Something, she occupied during her body was exhausted. A distraction?

No.

Something in her defends itself violently against it if she remembers that Peeta could be a distraction. He is more; what she completely throws of course because she needs, actually, nobody. She can live quite well with herself alone and best she would be again the Katniss which she was before the games.

The hunting with Gale, the life with Prim and the fury on her mother were long time important components, however, now everything would change.

She doesn't want Peeta in her new foreign life. Not because he isn't that important, but because he should keep her in memory as she was when he has fallen in love with her. If they remain in contact now, he would be rather disappointed maybe.

The nightmares already come and she knows what the games have done with her mentor Haymitch. She has killed and seen how others were killed. She was warned that the Capitol had an eye on her. The fear of losing Prim will hound her the next years of the harvest, until her sister would become of age. Even afterwards she will worry about the children who are born in the sombre future. Now, because she has seen the Hunger Games herself, everything is much more real. The fury on the Capitol, the fear of the harvest, the precaution that her descendants don't suffer the same destiny.

Peeta will never have the chance to get to know the Katniss which she was still few weeks ago and her current I is disagreeable to her. More than this. She has raised the Capitol against herself, was rebellious. She hasn't shown initiative and the more people she loves in her life, the more she has to lose.

However, a bad notion steals over her. The fact that it could be presumably already too late to worry about it.

Since Peeta already has a place in her heart.

Still. She mustn't outbid it. She manages only one obsessed smile. „You mustn't answer it, to tell the truth. If I know what I have in you then you will also know how it will be without me. However, believe me, it becomes easier."

„Maybe I don't want the easy way? If it was easy, I wouldn't follow after all years still a girl for whom I am invisible", he sighs loudly. „Even if we have now something what connects us, I see that it separates us too." He makes a short break, before he shuts one step to Katniss and strokes her one strand from the face and behind the ears. With the touch on her skin she winces noticeably and her eyes flash for one moment.

„I am sorry, but I have to thank the Capitol. These Hunger Games have given me an opportunity to know you better." He stops as if he knew how cruelly his words may sound, however, Katniss understands it. In his funny, completed kind he is right.

Her contradictory feelings reflect exactly what he has caught just in words. She hates the Capitol to have changed them, but she is grateful for Peeta. And now she is afraid of losing him, wants to know him in her nearness, but would like to show to nobody how important he is to her. Maybe if president Snow wants to punish her in future, for being rebellious in the arena – Rue and the berries – it will not fall back on Peeta.

She enjoys for one moment how Peeta Mellark has laid his thumb on her cheek and his stroking fingers and glides affectionately over it. He knows quite instinctively what she calms. If she thinks for one moment that there are no cameras that it could only be him and her in this world and she mustn't be afraid of losing him, she can drop herself for a moment.

„It goes for me there like you, Peeta", she says in the whisper. She stands firm to his look and edges out no longer the smile that the pleasant feeling releases in her which she has tried to suppress. „But you know that it's not over. The Hunger Games will be over for us two, but not for all following generations. Many others will gain our experience and the murder will go on." She swallows hard. „We both will be their mentors, will see her death. The nightmares will go on and someday they will punish us to have been so rebellious. I love Prim, and mother and Gale, just as to me other people in district 12 are important. But you, Peeta, you shouldn't suffer from my inability. I would not endure losing you."

With these words he catches her chin, presses his lips on hers and buries himself with his long slender fingers in her open hair. She enjoys the feeling to be desirable, his skin near at hers, to stand near with him and the adrenalin by her body. At this moment the world is perfect and only when he frees himself wheezy of her, the tears come.

„I have survived the arena, Katniss", she hears him saying. „So that I can protect you. If you think that I throw away my life frivolously, after I know that you don't wanna lose me, you don't know me very well. I will do everything to stay alive. I promise to you, they don't get me."

When she looks in his blue eyes, she can believe it him. It is this what makes Peeta Mellark for other so sympathetically. His words are well-considered and don't miss her aim. He creates that she feels sure and decides to enjoy it.

At least for a night.


End file.
